


Put To Bed Wet

by TGP



Series: Interspecies Mating Rituals [3]
Category: Next Avengers
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TGP/pseuds/TGP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One would think that after a decade and a half, Tony would get used to the idea of being alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put To Bed Wet

One would think that after a decade and a half, Tony would get used to the idea of being alone. He had always been a survivor and having lived a life where attachments were more or less avoided, he’d learned how to soldier on.

 

Heh. Soldier. Tony covers his eyes with one hand, rubs them, pinches the bridge of his nose, and then pretends he didn’t just think of Steve.

 

The ones he did let get close he misses, but he can handle it. He can go on, like always. Tony is the king of compartmentalization. Or maybe just denial. He’s not sober enough to know but not quite drunk enough to wonder. It’s not scotch, but it’ll do. The alcohol runs down his throat like motor oil and the feeling in his belly isn’t so much warmth as it is a stinging inferno of sludge that doesn’t make him feel any better. He pretends it does anyway and takes another swig.

 

Tony pretends a lot of things. Like right now, sitting in his lab, he’s pretending he isn’t lonely and hurting and sad. The few vids of his friends he managed to save play around him on an array of screens, sounds muted. ACDC fills his ears as the bass thrums through his chest. The volume he’s got the music at is fit to deafen.

 

One thing Tony is proud of is that he got to shape the musical tastes of their kids. They don’t even know that Kenny Loggins wrote anything other than _Danger Zone_ , the lucky bastards. _Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap_ had been their lullaby before they started sleeping in different rooms. Tony thinks Natasha would have approved.

 

He watches her on one of the screens, chatting up Clint in the living room of the Mansion. Many of the other Avengers had more or less moved into the place when they weren’t out doing their solo gigs or when they just needed some time off from the world. It had been a good crash point (It had been home). Tony watches the animated way Clint speaks with his hands, so different than how he’d been on missions. Natasha’s curls bounce and dance with every movement and the curve of her lips is amused and sarcastic.

 

Tony had been half in love with that woman, but it was the kind of love you had for big brother that still gave you noogies when you were forty. Sure, she’d been a bombshell but you don’t tap those you work with. He’d learned that with Pepper.

 

Oh, _Pepper_ …

 

Another burning gulp of hooch doesn’t quite manage to cover up the way his eyes mist. He tries to think of Pepper the least because she, more than anyone else, is completely his fault. Tony had ruined her even before Ultron ripped out her spine for daring to stand between it and him.

 

He closes his eyes. The memory flashes behind his eyelids. He opens them and he can still see her. Tony looked to the screens again. She’s not on any of them. He lets his gaze drift between them and wonders when he’ll be drunk enough not to hurt (never).

 

Thor’s big blue eye shows up on one screen as he peers with distrust into the camera. He pulls back, futzes with it a bit, and then turns to talk to someone over his shoulder. It’s so endearingly Thor that for a moment, Tony can’t be pissed at him for leaving Earth. Then he remembers Toruun being shoved crying into his arms and regains the anger.

 

Anger is a lot easier than crushing depression, Tony has found. It keeps his blood flowing and his will to live strong. Well, not strong, but active. Active is a good word for it. He’s got their kids to watch over, so active is better than nothing.

 

And just how the hell did he get nominated for Father of the Year? That’s something he still doesn’t get. Should have been Steve that ran off with the brats. At least he could physically defend them. All Tony had managed to do was hide them away and build robotic guardians – _and look how that had turned out._

 

The fact of the matter is that Tony is a terrible parent and a worse guardian. He understands this perfectly. The kids not being raving lunatics he attributes singularly to their genetics. There is a very, _very_ good reason that Tony Stark, Jr., had never been born.

 

(The reason has less to do with Tony’s lack of parenting credentials and more with his own self hatred. But he pretends the women he’d chosen were barren wastelands. Except Pepper, who had just been too perfect to sully herself with his child.)

 

Tony finishes the bottle as he stares at Steve and Bruce and the holographic chess board between them. It had been one of Tony’s inventions, something to pass the time with on a boring Sunday evening, and then Steve and Bruce had claimed it for their own when he was finished. A wrinkle formed between Steve’s brows as he studied the board. He wasn’t a great player (Bruce beat him pretty much every time) but he had always been ready for another game. Tony watches him make a move and is drunk enough to wonder what those hands would have felt like on him.

 

Tony is a ladies man through and through. It’s one of his defining character traits. That doesn’t mean he never wondered and that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have welcomed. He’s all inclusive like that. Didn’t help that all of the Avengers were perfect for bro-crushes. Hell, Thor hugged them all like it was going out of style – wait, he’s supposed to be mad at Thor, damn it.

 

Another screen holds Janet. It’s the only clip he still has of her. She smiles widely, all teeth and sharp wit. He thinks it’s from a party they had for the winter holidays, because the Avengers were all about that political correctness. He snorts at his own thoughts and watches Janet babble to someone off screen. The focus of the vid is actually on Clint messing around with one of his arrows and then it moves over to watch Janet and- ah, T’Challa. Tony misses messing with him. He never freaked out but his dry wit had certainly been worth the trouble. Plus there was the whole culture clash thing, which had always been hilarious.

 

Hank avoided cameras like the plague so Tony has shots of him, a few frames at a time, as he escapes. There isn’t even a good shot of his face, except for his Avengers ID. Another hard to capture one had been Ororo. Someone got her in a clip with Clint again, that camara whore.

 

There are other clips – he even got Sif and the Warriors Three on one very memorable occasion – and Tony lets himself glide through them all. He remembers his friends and comrades and even the ones that annoyed him leave a painful ache in his chest. He gets another bottle, finishes it, and lets himself drift away to the sounds of _Back in Black_.

 

Sometime later, he wakes up enough to notice someone helping him out of his chair. He leans against the smaller, leaner body and lets them lead him away. When the bed hits his knees, Tony collapses down onto it with an admiring sigh. He manages to give his savior a bleary glance, recognizes the shock of red hair, and thanks Natasha as he falls into oblivion.

 

\---

 

The worst thing about industrial grade hooch is that it kicks like a bitch. Tony wakes up miserable and sick and swearing he’ll never do it again (he lies). It’s past noon and the only one still asleep is James, predictably. The others have been out and around for hours, either training or helping with the city. Which is where he should be, but just walking is a chore and why be a genius if you can’t slough off the work sometimes.

 

Tony thinks about eating, nearly throws up, and settles for the caffeinated sludge they call coffee. It’s not really coffee, more like a caffeine substitute Hawkeye’s rebels brought with them when they helped found the city. Tony isn’t really sure what it is and for his own sanity, he hasn’t analyzed it either. There’s a lot of things they eat that he doesn’t look at too closely.

 

As he heads back towards his room, Tony pauses as he hears an achingly familiar sound. Natasha’s laughter had always been a golden sound because it happened so rarely. She’d been more of the smile-because-you’re-already-dead type. Tony startles so badly that he nearly drops his coffee. He quickly gets back to James’ door and then barges in without a by your leave.

 

James stiffens. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, finger curled tight in the rumpled sheets. His hair is a mess of spikes going in all directions and after a moment of surprise, his expression goes grim and defensive.

 

On a screen mounted on his wall, a few of the Avengers are sitting around a card table, playing what looks to be Hand and Foot and Natasha grins like a reaper as she picks up her foot only to lay it all down with the rest of her cards to groans all around. Even Steve gives his own hand a bemused look as Bruce starts tallying up the points for the round.

 

Tony drags his eyes from the vid because he’s in no mood to look at his dead friends right now. Not while he’s sober and hung over and still hurting from the emotional battering he gave himself last night. Instead, he glares at James, who returns the look with every ounce of defensive anger he can muster.

 

“You went snooping,” Tony growls out, his voice gravelly and rough.

 

“You hoarded,” James retorts as his fingers tighten even more in the sheets. At this rate, he’ll rip them and fabric is tough to find.

 

Tony glances at the screen and then looks away as Steve drops a kiss to the corner of Natasha’s amused mouth. He glares at James some more, tries to ignore Clint’s complaining, and then leaves to go hide in his room again.

 

Through the day, Tony naps and chokes down food and naps some more. He’s somewhat human again by evening. Next time he tries to drink himself stupid, he’ll make sure to do it before a day he’s suppose to be doing something, rather than one he had been planning to squander anyway. He feels useless and hyper despite his still pounding head and sour stomach.

 

Tony heads to the lab and puts the music on at half volume, only to quarter it after. He can barely hear it (he won’t admit that he’s starting to go deaf) but at least its there to keep him company. He gets to work on the water filter he’s been fiddling with, trying to lessen the waste and gain more purity, and loses himself.

 

He keeps seeing James sitting on his bed defending his right to watch his own parents.

 

Then his wrench slips, scrapes along his fingers, and Tony curses for a good five minutes straight after throwing the thing across the room.

 

Tony hates being wrong almost as much as he hates being lonely. He rakes a hand back through his hair. It hadn’t been a conscious decision not to share the video footage with the kids. He just… hasn’t. It isn’t like the music, which is universal and wonderful and Hawkeye doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he calls it noise. The vids are… Those are Tony’s friends, what passes as his family.

 

The kids are too, but… It’s just different. It is. It’s not like Tony’s their dad or anything. He made for damn sure that the kids knew that. He fancies himself an uncle. But the Avengers… Those were Tony’s brothers and sisters, the family he never had. Those are _his_.

 

He realizes this is stupid the moment he thinks it. If anyone had claim to those vids on the basis of _family_ , it isn’t him. He thinks of James and curses again. Just giving them a half assed fairy tale isn’t good enough anymore.

 

\---

 

When Tony presents the kids with his present, they don’t seem to understand which is a damned shame because Tony had been careful to craft each disc with the child in mind. Well, all but James’ but he’d already seen the download of the entire archive the boy had done. His disk was just a backup copy.

 

The kids head off with their disks and the promise that they’ll enjoy them when they get around to watching. Tony stares at them with varying levels of bemusement.

 

James stays. He leans against the door frame, turning the case in his hands, and then glances at Tony. The look in his eyes is guarded and quiet and in that moment, even with his Steve blue eyes, James has never looked more like Natasha. Tony remembers the half crazed dream that she’d dragged him to bed the other night and feels a pang of uncomfortable guilt.

 

“Thanks,” James says as he pulls away from the doorframe.

 

Tony nearly apologizes to him but James seems to sense it and then gives him a vague sort of smile. It’s enough of a forgiveness that Tony stays silent and James heads on to do whatever it is that teenaged superheroes do after the end of the world. He supposes he should be grateful that the kid spared him from a girl feelings sharing moment (he’s never been good at the feelings thing.)

 

Tony goes to the lab. He sits in his chair and looks at his blank screen. Somehow, he feels better even if he doesn’t feel _good_. It’s enough.

 

He’ll survive, as always. He thinks about getting that last bottle of bootleg and then he doesn’t and instead works on the water filter again. Maybe if he gets it working the way he wants it to, he’ll feel a little more fulfilled with his life.

 

Tony is the best of all at lying to himself.


End file.
